“He’s Michael Scott meets Dr. Evil.”
Laugh Wit
Try as he might, Elon Musk simply cannot add “funny guy” to his ever-growing resumé — and as some of the best comedians in the game explain, there are a lot of reasons why.
To that end, the Los Angeles Times compiled a “crack team” of comedians, with credits ranging from “Bob’s Burgers” to “Community” to “Last Week Tonight,” to drill down exactly why Musk’s jokes don’t land.
Take, for example, the exchange in which Musk, for some reason, decided to issue a weirdly-timed “that’s what she said” when New York’s Rep. Hakeem Jeffries tweeted that “House Dems are fighting hard for the American people” while “right-wing extremists are fighting each other.”
“The problem is ‘fighting hard’ does not have a double meaning,” Hari Kondaboly, stand-up comedian and creator of “The Problem With Apu” told the LA Times. “Also, a second sentence preceded his ‘joke,’ so it’s not really clear what he was trying to do.”
Kondabolu’s fellow stand-up Jiaoying Summers, who owns the club Hollywood Comedy in Los Angeles, agreed that Musk didn’t land the joke because “he didn’t use it correctly.”
“There is nothing sexy about it,” he said.
Squeaky Cringe
In spite of not being funny, Musk also has repeatedly attempted to do “bits,” such as his apparent obsession with the so-called “weed number” 420 and 69, the number that vaguely resembles a sex position — and as some of the comedians who spoke to the LA Times note, the cringe factor actually makes him funnier.
“This is legitimately hilarious because it’s so stupid,” Nikki Glaser, the host of the “FBoy Island” reality dating show, said of Musk’s repeated 420 and 69 jokes. “The best joke is that he thinks he’s clever. He’s Michael Scott meets Dr. Evil.”
Podcaster Spencer Crittendon also thinks that Musk’s 420 obsession, specifically, is accidental comedic gold.
“What’s funny is that he keeps stepping on rakes because he needs to do 420 jokes,” the host of the “That Happens” podcast said. “It’s destroying everything.”
Crittendon pointed to speculation that Musk’s 420 fixation may well have, through a series of misadventures, caused SpaceX’s Starship to blow up on April 20th.
“I mean, the reason that the rocket exploded [is] because he committed to a 4/20 launch date as a joke,” he said. “It’s insane! Thousands of birds died because of a 420 joke.”
Ultimately, we should take these kinds of W’s when they come, because as long as this unfunny guy is running Twitter, the line between his cringe-ness and his ability to change the world at a whim keeps getting thinner and thinner.
More on Musk: Video Shows Elon Musk “White Boy Dancing” in Mexico